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- [00:00]
A
Hey experts listeners, I want to key you into something that we do very special here at OPS Experts Club and that's a masterclass. We have a free masterclass called Foundations that Scale. And the great thing about this masterclass is it's for operation professionals who are growing businesses. One of the most dangerous things you can do as an operator is grow businesses on a foundations that's not stable. So in this particular masterclass, we take apart all of the inside pieces of your team, your tech and how they're using time and, and we make sure that you're building on a foundation that's stable. So if you want to check out a great masterclass completely for free, go to foundationsthatscale.com we'll see you there.
- [00:36]
B
Welcome to the Ops Experts Club with Aaron Taran and Savannah. This podcast will take you behind the scenes of some of the finer details of multi million dollar companies. These ops experts have dealt with operations for scaling companies and well established businesses with anywhere from small to large teams. If you've ever been deep into the details of a major company, then you know how much it takes and these conversations are just for you. Welcome to the Ops Experts Club podcast.
- [01:07]
A
OPS Expert Club. So I'm talking about it. Oh, Terrence Turner, great to see you this fine morning. How's your day doing on your end? It's going well.
- [01:19]
C
It's traveling smoothly.
- [01:21]
A
Traveling smoothly. I like that, I like that. How's your day typically? Record these on Mondays and I typically tell people that there's no such thing as Happy Monday, it's just Monday. You know, Like, I feel like because for operators and those of us facing operations, we have to deal with the visionaries that come in who are super pumped. It's Monday, which means they've got probably about 55,000 new ideas that they're going to roll at you and expect you also to have already finished the 55,000 ideas they gave you Friday afternoon before you closed. So I think that it's always a little bit of Helter Skelter on Monday for operators, which makes it hard for it to be a happy Monday. It's just a. I survived Monday, but this Monday, this is feeling pretty good to me. Feeling pretty good.
- [01:58]
C
Good. Yeah. I think I'll survive today.
- [02:01]
A
Yeah, dude. Right? That's what I always tell myself when I start freaking out a little bit on Mondays. I just remind myself, hey, it's just Monday. This is how Mondays always feel. You're going to make it through to the end of the day. You can survive this it's just one day. No big deal. Don't get crazy.
- [02:13]
C
Yeah.
- [02:14]
A
Awesome. Taryn, Hey. I thought we could talk about today, something that we see a lot, and that's how fast can I start making money off of my new hire? Right? Like, I think visionaries are always the ones that are feeling the strain and the stress of money, right? They need money coming in because they feel like, holy crap, I have so much money going out. Right? I'm paying for so many people doing this. I'm paying so much for ads. I'm paying so much for marketing. I'm paying so much for, like, operations, which is the chiefest of evils to a lot of visionaries, where they're like, those guys just suck my dollars. I don't make any money off of those guys, but I think that they're the necessary evil to keep the machine working. But I think it's really good for us to help set some expectations for visionaries as I go, as they go out to do some hiring. When can we expect to start seeing some money return back on this investment? Right. It's all about roi, return on investment. Your people are your highest investment. That's what we would advocate for here on Ops Experts club. So you are putting dollars, energy, time, your teams time into bringing them on, vetting them, onboarding them, and then hopefully releasing them into the wild to help turn you more dollars. How quick can we expect a turnaround on dollars invested in employees? So, Taryn Turner, what are your thoughts on this as kickoff?
- [03:27]
C
Yeah, that's a great question. And obviously the cost of an employee more than their salary is the time it takes to get them up to speed. So it's more than just how much you're paying them, it's how much, how long will it take until you can get a return on them. So that's another cost to consider when you're bringing on new people onto your team. And what kind of process are they coming into? You know, are they going to build something and then run it? Are they running something that's already built and vetted, ready to go? Are they the first in this position? Are they a number two, number three? So there's other people they can follow? Is it just like a one and done? They can shadow once, do it every time after that, or is it like we're gonna get them right in the middle of it for six weeks and then they can be off on their own? I mean, there can be a lot of different answers to that question, really, depending on it. But I think you know, to your point, not immediately is the answer.
- [04:23]
A
You know, I think what we, what I feel like we see on both sides of the coin for a visionary, oftentimes when they come to hiring is on the one side they're like, hey, let's hire cheap and then grow them internally.
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C
Right?
- [04:34]
A
Because they love the thought of hiring low, getting a good deal on somebody, but also like, let's culture them in our ways, you know, and steep them up. So I think that if they're not experiencing massive weight, like a lot of times a lot of visionaries wait too long, I think before they start hiring, I think there's probably two sides of that coin. Either they wait too long and then they're like in panic mode because half the ship's on fire and they're just like throwing bodies at it to try and beat back the flames. Or on the flip side, they start hiring too fast where they're just like, I see this problem, it's coming down the road. Let's make sure we hire to get it in place. But then there's no real work for the person that just got hired to come in and do because it was predictive hiring. So I think that what you said is really important. And that is, what season of business are you in right now as you hire out this position? Has the position already been built? Or are you just going to throw somebody in the middle of it and hope they're smart? They're going to figure it out. Do you want to hire low, cheap and grow them internally, which is usually a slow grow. Right. You're not going to be able to bring somebody in low and then they, they're usually going to come experience poor, but maybe like raw materials rich. So you're going to harvest that out of them. But that's, that's a slow grow process. Or you flip that over and then you hire highly experienced people. Right. The danger of highly experienced people is a lot of times they've been doing it for a while and they might not realize that you want them to do the doing. A lot of those people can come in and want to be leaders in the organization or want to be head over a department instead of realizing, no, no, I am hiring you for, because you're excellent at what you do. But typically this is going to be a doer leader role where I'm going to need you to get in there and, and really do some of the doing. So I do think you're right. Not only where are we at in the business trajectory, where's this role at in the hiring process. And, and what am I looking for? A young person that is looking for experience that I can pour into, or a seasoned person that I just need to make sure they understand the calibration of the role and that it's going to be a leading doing position.
- [06:23]
C
Mm, yeah. And even if you want to go out and hire an expert somewhere, you know, anybody, and they are high cost or the best cream of the crop, it's never going to be a good idea. If they just come in with their ideas and start making money. Day one, they're going to mess something up. They're going to butcher your name, your product, your suite, your reputation, because they just don't know. And anybody worth their own name working for you is going to spend some time onboarding into who you are, what you're selling, who your audience is. And that's going to take time too. So it's not even just about, you know, what if I buy or pay extra for an expert? It's like if they're truly an expert, they're going to spend a week or two getting to know everything they can. So when they go and do something, they understand, has it been done before who the audience is, what the audience thinks, who you are and all that.
- [07:15]
A
I think probably the best thing you could ask yourself as a visionary is how can I most easily replicate myself? You know, whatever it was, probably most people have started businesses. They were doing it all at the beginning. You know, I mean, they, they were the ones that came up with the idea. They were the ones that built the original website or whatever the vehicle was that got people to their product, Right? And then they were the one that's probably answering those questions coming in about that thing they were trying to sell. And then they were the ones that were selling people into it, and then they were probably largely part of the fulfillment process. They were, they were in this whole thing and then you start breaking off pieces. And I think EOS does this really, really well. Entrepreneurs operating system from the book Traction by Gino Wickman, which is something we build on here at the Collab team all the time, is to delegate and elevate, right? How can I elevate visionary up? By delegating some of the things down that don't require their brilliance any longer. So as I start delegating things down, I would say start breaking off the pieces that you don't want to do anymore or you don't find joy in doing anymore, or don't require you anymore. So we can get our best ROI out of you as the visionary. But as you hand those things down, you need to realize, well, you also are separating that customer experience or that part of the business from you as the primary visionary who is able to impart all those things because it was your baby. And if you hand that piece down, how can you commit a piece of yourself to whoever it is that's going to be taking on these new roles that you're handing down? And I'd say either you need to plan on spending a good amount of time with those people as you're hiring them in or create a good onboarding experience. Right, where maybe it's videos where you're walking them through. Hey, this is how we look at customer experience. Hey, these are who our avatar are. Hey, this is how we find people. This is how we upsell people. This is how people travel on their customer journey with us. Hey, this is. But even similar simple things like, hey, this is how you get paid here, this is how we document time here. This is how we can. This is what we consider a good work ethic here. Having some sort of one sheet that explains the background, the heartbeat, the ethos of your business, all those things are going to really help you get faster traction. It's your biggest concern is how can I get the best bang for the buck out of every person I hire? Well, how can you invest as much of yourself or the spirit of your company into that person before they even start doing the dang thing? Because otherwise they're going to take their skill set or things they learned other places and bring it into yours. And then you can have a conflict of culture. Then you could have people bringing in even the best hired ones experiences they've had. Sometimes the downside to experience is they bring in all that experience and, and sometimes that experience might pollute your culture or dilute your culture at least if you don't give them the right amount of time with you or with things that are going to give him or her your language.
- [09:44]
C
Yep. Yeah, I know in the coffee days it was sometimes better to hire people with no experience because you don't have to untrain them from their previous job before training them for their new job. Exactly the same really is.
- [09:57]
A
And I know coffee. You know, Tara and I think both of us came out of more of a hands on retail storefront experience before we started doing online. You know, we've done a lot with online entrepreneurs these days. You know, amazing names out there. P. Vargas, Pace Morby, Pedro Adeo, Gary Breca, you know, I mean, Brandon Turner, some really great big names out there, educators in the space doing cool stuff. But I think that I know for me, Keith Yackey, that was where we both started at the very beginning. Right. I think that what was really weird for me is going from the storefront experience where I'm serving something quality. You know, I think back, you mentioned coffee. Both of us came out of roasters coffee back in the day where it was like service, speed, strength. Right. Were the three pillars to make roasters what it was back in the day? And you are putting out this excellent cup of coffee in a way that you knew the customer's name and quick so you could keep the drive thru moving. Right. So it's like speed, service, strength. That was the pillars and you gave them something craft. Well, when you come into the online world, I think the tough time I found, at least the beginning was what the heck are we selling? Like what, what, what are they buying? They're buying air, they're buying video footage, they're buying an asset that they can understand the workflow of your ideology. And I know that for me at the beginning, it was really hard for me to get behind that and feel strong about it and good about it because the visionary could come up with an idea today and be selling it by this afternoon and then have knocked down hundreds of thousands of dollars by this evening. And then we hadn't even built the thing yet. It was just an idea and it was like, man, but where's the craft? Where's the quality? So I do think though, what we learned from coffee does really speak a lot. And that is, you know, if you bring somebody in that thinks they understand and they start doing it their way, but it's not your way. What you're going to get is a bad experience for the customer because that's not what you wanted. So you're going to be frustrated. The customer's probably going to be confused. And so I think that the downside to rushing in a new hire, sticking somebody in a position just because they've done this before, without good training, without good onboarding, trying to expect a good ROI right out of the can with people, is that you're probably going to get a culture confusion moment with your customers and with your team.
- [12:00]
C
Yep. And I think too, on the flip side of what you said about replicating yourself as the visionary is there might be that point where you've got a new product out or a new offering or a new business line and it's not proven yet and you just don't have the funds to hire somebody new hire team to do anything. And you're going to have to hustle for a bit. So do you have that hustle in you to. To start bringing in the money yourself before you can actually hire somebody else out? Because there's going to be that, that awkward middle ground where, okay, it's successful, but still not enough money to hire somebody, and you got to get it through there yourself.
- [12:37]
A
There are a couple of pieces that you said right there that I think are really smart. The first one is, do you understand your finances well enough to understand if you can afford to hire somebody or not? Yeah, I think that, yeah, make sure you're really clear on that. Make sure you're really clear before you start getting people in the door on how long can we sustain this? Because nobody likes to be the person that hires somebody and then fires somebody a month later because you ran out of money. And then you're going to come up with some reason why it was their fault that they had to get fired. But it wasn't really. It was just that you didn't understand your finances well enough to justify can we afford to hire yet? And so I think having metrics that are really strong, like what is your labor percentage that you want to hold to how much profit should there be in each one of your line items that you're trying to sell? And even if you're trying to launch something new, just like you said, Taren, I would say always try and pilot it first, as lean as you possibly can to see is this going to work? Can this generate money? And the best way I think you can do that is, hey, we're going to use existing assets on the field. I would say let everybody see that. Both eyes wide open. Hey, guys, we're starting this new line. It's going to be a little bit more stress, a little bit more work at the beginning. I see that. I get that this isn't a forever solution. It's just we're going to have to try a couple of things to see if we can knock down some dollars from this. So, hey, I appreciate what you're doing. Maybe show them some ways of appreciation. I think small tokens doesn't have to be like you give everybody a raise, but it's like, hey, maybe an Amazon gift card or sending them out to dinner with their spouse or like doing something kind for them. Even if it's like just some sort of gift that you could send that doesn't have to be super expensive. But just an appreciation moment because we're going to be start pressuring people. But I'd also say just like you said, Taryn, nobody works as hard as people who are watching their leader work. At least as hard as they're working. Nobody. It doesn't feel good to anybody to be like, hey, I'm starting this new business line and I'm going to go to Italy for the next three weeks. I just expect you guys to work really hard. Like that just never resonates well. So visionary, I would encourage you to realize find your slice of the new product offering that you're going to be bringing to market and what something that you can put your hand to the plow on as well. You know, we were on an L10 this morning with a guy I respect a lot of as the visionary rolling out something new and you know we talked about, hey, he's going to launch this new thing and he's expecting the callers to make 900 calls a day and that's going to knock down about X amount of phone calls that are booked and this amount that he's hoping to retain from those calls that are booked and that's going to mean X amount of sales calls. And I said okay, so who's taking the sales calls? And he said well I guess that's me now. And so I, it's this a new thing. I'm going to have to pilot this out. And so I guess that means I'm going to have to work into some evenings, I'm going to have to work some longer days than I wanted to doing this. And I thought it was a really good thing for him to come to realization on as well that I know this means that he's going to have to work extra hard if he wants to see this new line of business open up. He is the leader needs to example, hey, I'm going to, I'm going to put some extra time into this too. So I'm not asking this of my team but I'm going to stand up and I'm going to take the extra load. I think it's really important to lead by example.
- [15:27]
C
Yeah. And it's not a permanent solution. You know, this thing kicks off in another 30 days. You can have a full time sales closer hired and he can, if he's doing it right, he's documenting all of his processes, recording his sales calls so they can see what a winning sales call looks like and they can just start taking over almost immediately.
- [15:47]
A
I think, you know, every time we roll out A gap analyzer, which is our proprietary tool that we created. Gap Analyzer.com we put somebody through the gap analyzer and it documents across your whole team in 15 minutes of your team's time. Shows you exactly where all the overlap and gaps are on your team. But what it does is it documents in the daily, weekly, monthly how they're using time and what segment of the business that that time can be allocated to. So then when you roll all of it up together, you can see in a visual representation this is where time is being allocated across the organization for everybody on my teams. And then from there we take the delegate elevate, we take the gap analyzer, and we put it to a delegate elevate exercise, which is what we just talked about for the visionaries of how can I take a list of all the duties and how can I determine what should be delegated off first? I love that exercise. I know we've talked about it here on the show before, but I'm going to delegate down the things I want to hand off. But the easiest way that you can possibly hand off anything that you're trying to delegate it down for is creating sops around those things. So just like you said, Taryn, maybe visionary has to put their hand to the plow, put in some extra hours, but the hope is you're so ping out your process as you're doing it. And the easiest way to do that is just to open up a she right next to you and start bullet pointing out the different things that you're doing, the different steps in the process, the different assets that are going to be needed for you to be able to hand that off, because you can't hand anything off that hasn't been SOP and standard operating procedure. Until you line those things out, there's no way that anybody could possibly take over behind you. And then the realization of as you hand it off, it's not just like lobbing a grenade over the wall and just being like, hey, I hope this all works out. Not if you want it to stick. Like, as I pass off this sop, there's probably going to be some quality control I still need to check in on. So I just. That realization of this particular visionary saying, hey, I'm gonna have to do some extra sales calls, work into the night, work extra hard on this new product offering we're rolling out. But the hope would be I'm gonna line out exactly how I want the sales calls to go. And then when we bring somebody in in this role, all they have to do is follow up on the way that I've been doing things. And then from there I'm gonna spot check it, I'm gonna listen to their calls, I'm gonna make sure it turns out right. So there's still gonna be some work on the backside for Visionary, but hopefully incrementally much less. And then over the next month or two or three, you can work yourself out of that role and then move on to the next thing that the business needs some attention on.
- [17:59]
C
Yep, yep, that would be a beautiful thing right there. That happened. Doesn't always happen.
- [18:06]
A
It doesn't always happen because typically visionaries don't love soping things out. So my encouragement would be find somebody like us. Find somebody that does SOPs. Well, you know, we're just finishing up a contract for another client who went through the whole entire organization, did that exact process. Gap analyzer to a delegate, elevate to SOPs. Nurture, nurture, nurture, nurture to, to get the sops out of the people. Harvest those things out, people. And some of them are just like, hey, do me a favor, we just kick on a loom video and record yourself during this process and we'll take it from there, you know, and I think if you're saying, hey, Aaron, I just am not that big yet, and I don't know I can afford that yet, I think AI is an incredible thing. Record a video. There are a lot of different AI bots out there that you could push that video to and ask it to process it for you, and that'll at least be better than nothing. And then from there it's much easier to refine something that's been written out. And maybe you're just, you're just not going to give the time to it. A lot of visionaries don't, a lot of people don't. But that's also the biggest reason why people don't get top dollar. When they want to try and be. If they want to try and sell the business, if they want to be acquired, is that. No, no, no. That that brand is just Aaron. If the Collab team is just Aaron, then there's going to be a problem. If I ever want to be acquired, if I ever want to sell like it, it has to have my business, has to have my systems. My systems are only as good as what it's producing. So your P and L should be justified by the systems you have in place. Unless everything's built on your back. And if everything's built on your back, then really You've just bought for yourself a really stressful job because then everything is just relying on you. You never get vacations, you never get time away. You're always stressed about how things work. But the more and more you can hand things off, the freer you're going to be from your business.
- [19:43]
C
Yeah, yeah. But I mean, at least still you're working for yourself.
- [19:46]
A
That is the narrative, that is what people say and that is true. So I would say this is rebutton the show up today. Take homes. Best advice for you would be, and I know you're going to hate this, but just take it for a grain of salt. Be patient. Be patient with the process. Don't just go hire somebody and expect them to start banging down dollar bills right as they come in the door. They need to be cultured. They need to understand how you want them to do something. They need to understand the language that your business is built on. Because even if, even though there are a lot of businesses that are very, very similar, yours is uniquely yours for a reason. So how can I make sure that that transfer of culture happens as quickly as possible? But I do need to give them some on ramp and then from there, how do I make sure that if it's something new that we're all working equally together hard to make this thing happen? How can we keep it as lean as possible as long as possible, only higher once it's justified by the profit that comes out of each line item. And then as we do that hiring, let's be really particular on am I hiring somebody new as far as new to the space but has the right raw materials? Am I hiring something somebody experienced, which is great if you can hire experience. But make sure they understand that you want them to be a doer leader and that you're going to need their help with the lift. And then I would say give yourself some time to really make sure it's going to turn out the way you want it to turn out. Don't just expect that as soon as you try on the spigot, like gold's gonna pour out of that thing. There's probably gonna be some holes in the boat. At first you're gonna have to work through those things. But that's what makes business exciting. Finding the holes, working em, making sure you shore em up so you can move on to the next thing.
- [21:16]
C
Yep, yep. And it's gonna be hard. Nobody can be you better than you be you, you know, so you're not hiring a U replacement, you're hiring somebody you can hopefully train and coach and lead to be in the next best thing.
- [21:30]
A
Dude, I love it. And I would say celebrate diversity. Karen Turner is a lot different than me and I think Karen brings such a beautiful rounding out of Collab team. And Ben Clatterbuck is a lot different than Taryn Turner and Rachel Miller is a lot different than Ben Clatterbuck. And all the way throughout the organization, you're going to find different people here at the Colab team, empower the difference and realize they're going to make your business even better because you're just one person. And no matter how awesome you think you are, you're one person that appeals to a certain kind of people. And the more diverse you can make your business, the more you're going to appeal to the masses. So Taryn, thanks for being an awesome dude. Jurassic park is coming out soon, which I know lights your fire and so I'm excited about that. I'm hoping we're going to get some Little Caesars, watch some Jurassic park at your place. I think that's going to be amazing.
- [22:16]
C
Nice. Sweet. See you there.
- [22:18]
A
Awesome. Karen. Thank you Ops Experts. Thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next week here on OPS Experts Club.
- [22:25]
B
Thank you for tuning in to the Ops Experts Club podcast. New episodes available every week on Spotify, itunes, and everywhere you listen to podcasts. If you're curious about how some of the biggest names in entrepreneurship have scaled their businesses to the next level, check out some of our best content on this topic by going to foundations that scale.com you can find the link in our bio and do your part to improve as an OPS Expert.